{"id":3190,"date":"2012-06-06T06:00:59","date_gmt":"2012-06-06T11:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=3190"},"modified":"2012-06-06T06:00:59","modified_gmt":"2012-06-06T11:00:59","slug":"eavesdropping-for-fun-and-profit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/?p=3190","title":{"rendered":"Eavesdropping for Fun and Profit"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Not the real Stonehenge, but the photo got my attention. It looks a lot like a gorilla jumping off the stones. I feel a story coming on.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I am not a very physically adventurous person. You won\u2019t see me running any marathons, climbing Mount Everest, or parachuting out of a plane. The truth is, I\u2019ve had serious back problems since I was about twelve. That was when a drunken Boob Fairy visited me in the night and couldn\u2019t remember how many times she\u2019d hit me with her wand. I fear there are a lot of flat-chested girls out there who never got their turns that night.<\/p>\n

After I had kids, the Ass and Belly Fairies came by in a well-meaning, but poorly conceived attempt to even out my proportions. Thanks guys. I appreciate your help. Didn\u2019t help my back any, but at least I don\u2019t need to buy dresses that are four sizes bigger on the top than on the bottom.<\/p>\n

All this is to explain that I do not try a lot of daring or adventurous things for the sake of my writing. No martial arts classes, no standing in a field learning to aim and fire a gun, and no jarring car chases in the name of research.<\/p>\n

But none of those things show up in what I write (so far), so it doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One of my favorite things to do is sit quietly and listen to people. If you\u2019re ever at a restaurant with me, and my head tilts to the side while my eyes glaze over, give me a minute. I\u2019m probably eavesdropping on the family behind me. Something in their conversation grabbed me, and trying to talk to me is useless until I\u2019ve finished pillaging their discussion for dialogue.<\/p>\n

Sure. I have other hobbies. I read comic books, play video games, and travel a lot. But it all sifts through my brain and comes out the other side as bits and pieces of new stories.<\/p>\n

So, honestly, no, I don\u2019t seek out new experiences to inform my writing. Everything I do \u2014 from throwing in a load of laundry to visiting Stonehenge has potential story material imbedded in it, especially since I mostly \u00a0write urban fantasy, which combines the everyday with the strange.<\/p>\n

In fact, maybe I\u2019ll write a story about giants using Stonehenge as a clothesline. It\u2019s a reasonable explanation.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll get right on that. As soon as I finish recording the phone conversation you just had with your mother-in-law.<\/p>\n

\u2018Cause, damn. That\u2019s some juicy dialogue right there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am not a very physically adventurous person. You won\u2019t see me running any marathons, climbing Mount Everest, or parachuting out of a plane. The truth is, I\u2019ve had serious back problems since I was about twelve. That was when a drunken Boob Fairy visited me in the night and couldn\u2019t remember how many times […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1279],"class_list":["post-3190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-influence","tag-writing-experience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.confabulatorcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}